


Realizations

by Jane271



Series: MCU stories [One shots] [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Bruce Banner Is a Good Bro, Not A Fix-It, Not Canon Compliant, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, Sokovia Accords, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony kicks the Avengers out after Sokovia, What-If, not team Cap friendly, not wanda maximoff friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jane271/pseuds/Jane271
Summary: When Sokovia is still a wound too fresh in Tony's mind, Tony draws the line for the other Avengers.They can either have Tony or Maximoff on the team. And Steve will have to choose.
Series: MCU stories [One shots] [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678051
Comments: 44
Kudos: 2207
Collections: Cold Consequences, Post-Civil War Media Fallout (Team Iron Man), Team tony favs, Teamtonystark1, Tony Stark Defense Squad I, Tony Stark deserves more, Tony Stark is more than a doormat





	Realizations

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guy and gals,
> 
> Since there was a pretty awesome reaction to my previous Avengers story, i was inspired to write another one. I hope you enjoy.

Tony was sitting in deep thought in the kitchen.

It had been five days since the whole cluster-fuck that had been Sokovia, and it was the first time since his hearing that he’d been back in the US.

His hands were shaking as he picked up his smoothie and he was barely keeping himself up straight. His shoulders were screaming at him to just lay down and rest, but he knew that doing so without eating and drinking something would be something he’d come to regret.

His head hurt, his eyelids felt as if they were made of concrete and all he wanted was to sleep for more as 5 hours today before going back to Sokovia. He felt as if he hadn’t breathed since day one of the relief efforts and the suit, while amazing when helping dig people out of the rubble that used to be their homes, was exhausting to pilot.

He had wanted to keep going, but there were matters that he needed to do in the US that he had to return for. No matter how useful he was in the suit, sometimes being Tony Stark was even better. After all, if he could inspire a even thousand volunteers to come help, it would do more good in the long run as one metal suit could ever. It had been five days and the possibilities of finding survivors was growing slimmer with the hour. He’d had to make a choice and he chose to go for the long run. Going back when he did meant relief efforts would come rolling in.

He still felt useless sitting there, though. He thought back to the little girl he dug out only a few hours before leaving. He thought of the boy and his uncle that were found crushed in a car, the old couple in the collapsed nursing home…

He shook his head, knowing that if he went down that lane that the only result was that he would not be able to sleep the few precious hours that he had.

He swallowed another mouthful of smoothie and felt sickened when all it could remember him of the young boy that he shared an emergency tent with on day three, who couldn’t stop crying because the kid was hungry. He could hardly blame the kid, he’d been hungry too until the first relief efforts arrived. Canned peaches had never tasted as good as they did when it was the first thing he’d eaten in days. He’d sat in the dust with them, helped pack care packages, held up parts of buildings as brave volunteers went into the collapsed buildings and scouted for any survivors.

He took a few deep breathes and tried to keep the tears at bay. There would be time later to have a break-down. He still had work to do.

He had almost soldiered through drinking his smoothie when Steve appeared in the kitchen.

“Tony!” He heard. Tony could only slump his shoulders and hope that the sleep deprivation was making him hear things, because this was one thing he did _not_ need right now.

“Tony, where have you been?” A disappointed voice rings out and he feels a hand on his shoulder. Tony feels it burn like acid and he feels tainted by just the touch. Steve knows that he doesn’t like it when people touch him, he’d told the other man plenty of times, but it seemed that he just didn’t care for his boundaries.

Tony takes a deep breath to calm down because his patience is completely shot to hell, he felt as if he’d just come back _from_ hell, and if he wasn’t careful the only thing he would do was scream.

“I was-” He begins.

“You missed the debrief!” Steve interrupts. “Tony, you know you can’t miss mission debriefs! You especially!”

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” Tony flops out before he can even process it.

“Tony, watch your language. And what do you mean, ‘what do I mean by that’?”

Tony rubs his eyes and wished to be anywhere but here. “I mean, why me especially?”

Steve just tuts. “We all know that you’re the least experienced Tony. I know you think that you can do anything, but you should let us tell you where you went wrong. This whole incident would not have happened if you’d kept us in the loop about projects that you’ve got going on.”

“What did you just say?”

“I think you heard me.” Steve crosses his arms and looks down at Tony who hasn’t moved from his chair or made any attempt to.

“It sounds like you’re blaming this whole mess on me.”

Steve snarls. “Because it was! It was your mess, and look at what happened! Just because your ego is so large that you had to mess with technology that is way beyond you, an entire country was wiped off the map!”

And that’s when Tony breaks. “Shut the _fuck_ up.” And Steve is taken aback. Tony never raises his voice nor does he ever fight him on his lectures. “I’m not going to do this. Not now. The courts cleared me, and I’m dead tired. I’m high strung and if we do this now, I will _fuck you up_.”

“Don’t talk to me that way!”

“Or what?” Tony challenges, “Or what Rogers? You’ll beat me up? I think it funny that whenever you don’t hear what you want to hear, you decide to puff yourself up like an overconfident peacock and then threaten that person. It’s like playing chess with a pigeon, even if it loses, it will shit all over the place and strut around as if it won. Go to hell.”

Tony gets up to leave the room. He’s stopped when Steve roughly grabs him by the arm and yanks him back. “We’re not finished talking.”

“Get the fuck off of me! Steve, you’re hurting me! Let go!” Tony shouts, absolutely furious at being manhandled like a puppet.

“Not until you get your head on straight! What are you thinking, talking to your team leader like that?” He yells back while sharking Tony by the arm.

“What’s going on here?” Sam asks as he hurries into the room. And fuck if Tony had ever been that happy to see the man.

“He won’t fucking let go of me, is what happened!” Tony yells venomously.

“That’s not what happened, and you know it Tony.”

Sam shakes his head and tries his best to calm both men down. Sam only hoped that it would be enough to stop them from throwing punches. They made their way to the living room where the others had gathered.

“Steve?”

“I was only here to ask him why he thought it was okay to skip out on the debrief.”

“Tony?” Sam asks. And Tony realizes that he’s _grateful_ that he gets to explain. As if it were something he had to _earn_. And for once, he turns his filter off. He’s to tired to care and too pissed off about the bruises that are undoubtably forming on his upper arm to even try to care.

“Steve was being a hypocritical, condescending piece of shit, as per usual.”

At that another argument breaks out, this time all Avengers against Tony, because how dare he have an opinion. Lord forbid.

“And I would have given you the chance to vote on whether or not to accept Wanda.” Steve says as if that would be such a great honor.

“Who?” Tony asks dumbly. There had been a rising amount of heroes and vigilantes, but none he could remember by the name of Wanda.

“Wanda Maximoff. You know the girl whose entire family is now dead because of you.” Clint chips in.

Tony blinks a few times and tries to let that information sink in. “Maximoff.”

“Yes Tony, she was a great help in Sokovia, and we thought she would make a great addition to the team.”

“Please tell me that the sleep deprivation is actually causing me to hallucinate…” Tony begs.

Clint and Natasha sneer. “Maybe if you would not have been parting the last few days then you wouldn’t be having this issue.”

“Partying?”

“Yes, Tony. And we need to have a talk about those habits as well.” Steve says and the rest nod.

“All right, I’m going to say this once, and only once.”

Steve tilts his head and glares, daring Tony to continue. He continues anyway. “You get to choose. You either apologize, right now, and I will never hear of this bullshit of adding a Hydra agent to our team, or I’m leaving the Avengers.”

“Tony…” Steve begins and he sounds very disappointed, as if he could not believe what Tony was saying.

“No. Choose, me or her. I will _not_ have that bitch on the same team as I am.”

Clint snorts, “You’re not on the team Stark, no need to worry about that. You’re just a consultant. You don’t get to have a say in who we add to _our_ team.”

And Tony as actually speechless. He looks to Steve to see if he’ll say anything about whatever the hell that was, but the man is thinking. As if he had to actually think hard about replacing Tony with a Hydra agent.

And Tony is just so done with them all.

Eventually Steve speaks, “Tony, Clint is right. We don’t need your permission to add her to the team. I just thought that you would like to be included. But this is going to happen. She will be added to the team, and that’s final.”

“Okay then.” Is all Tony can say. “Well, I guess this is it then. I would say that if there’s an emergency to not call, but looking back on the clusterfuck that Shieldra was, I guess that it’s not necessary.”

With that Tony leaves and goes to sleep.

``````````````````````````````````````

Tony has slept for a total of six hours -Win!- when he’s called. He knew it would happen but he’s very happy when he looks on the clock.

He rushes a shower and makes his way downstairs, to find the Avengers in his kitchen. He greets them with a simple “Morning.” and ties his tie before moving for the coffee pot. He checks his watch and notices that he has to go out now or he’ll be late.

“Oh, before I go, I sent the eviction note to your emails. I’ve given you a week to move out. So you don’t have to worry that much.”

Instead of the nods of confirmation that they’d seen them, they stare at him in shock.

“Tony, you’re kicking us out?” Steve asks.

“Well, considering I’m no longer an Avenger, or never really was I guess, yeah. I’m asking you to leave. Since you never signed the contracts you’re still legally listed as guests, so I really should not have to even give you that time.”

Steve moves to say something but Tony’s cell rings. Before Steve can get a single word out, Tony is already out the door and taking on the phone.

```````````````````````````````````````

Tony was in Sokovia when he blocked Roger’s number. Rogers had been driving him up the wall with the amount of phone calls he’d made. In the past three days he’s called over fifty times and after the first five Tony stopped picking up. Steve was just calling to complain about how Tony was being unfair and should still fund them even if he had no say in how the team was run.

It was then that Tony realized how far he’d let them all go. And when he took a step back and looked at what had all happened in these past few days alone, he could not believe he was so blind.

All the putting him down, blaming him for everything, god it was so embarrassing he’d let them treat him like that. What was possibly even worse was that he missed them. It took all his willpower to not pick up the phone when Steve -Rogers!- called. He asked another volunteer whom he’d been working with to block the number for him, because he just _couldn’t._

It was well into the night when Tony returned to the camp the local volunteers had set up. He gratefully took a bowl with unidentifiable boiled vegetables and potatoes. He didn’t care. It was warm and settled nicely in his stomach while he sat on a small bedding made of thatch.

Without his knowledge a picture was taken of Tony as he sat there, dirty, sweaty and exhausted shoveling potatoes into his mouth.

````````````````````````````````````````

When Tony woke up the next day he woke up because Pepper called him. It was then that he learned of the existence of the picture. He had to admit, it looked awful. He was uncombed, dirty, in dirty everyday clothing and was mid-bite when it was taken. Not his most flattering photo, he had to admit.

They had a good laugh about it in the camp, though.

The public loved the photo of their hero making a difference and seeing him as an ordinary person for once. The relief effort got a lot of donations for it.

Win-win.

`````````````````````````````````

Steve could not stop losing.

When Tony decided that he wanted to leave the Avengers, Steve had been sure that everything would be all right.

Four days in and he was coming to the conclusion that it would not be as easy as he’d thought originally. They had set up camp in Sam’s house, seeing as he was the only one to still have a house besides Clint.

They original plan had been to go to Clint’s farm, but him and Laura had had a horrible fight about it when Clint told her that Wanda was coming too. She’d basically told him that he’d either have to come alone or to not show up at all, and even threatened to call the police if he took Wanda with him.

They had kept it a secret from Wanda. She didn’t need this kind of negativity, especially since she had lost her brother last week. Steve’s heart went out to the young girl.

So now they were camping out in Sam’s two bedroom, one bathroom house. It was very frustrating, but they didn’t have another option. Tony wasn’t picking up the phone anymore and Steve wanted to rattle the other man until he saw some sense.

It was ridicules that the brunet was still causing them so much trouble.

```````````````````````````````````````

Bruce froze when he saw Tony on the front page of a newspaper. The newspaper was difficult to read since he was still a novice at best when it came to Portuguese, but he could make out that Tony was still in Sokovia, helping with relief efforts. Tony looked fully in his element and had an exhausted half smile on his face. Bruce didn’t know what to think, knowing that Tony was out there working himself to the bone, while he was hiding like a coward. Hulk agreed that they were acting like cowards, hiding from the world. But he didn’t know what Hulk could help with. He was there to destroy, not mend.

It was then that he made out that the piece was also asking for anyone who wished to volunteer. From what he could make up they would take anyone and everyone. Construction, farmers, and doctors.

He took one look at Tony on the front page and made up his mind. In broken Portuguese he asked at the local library if they could look up if there were any volunteers leaving for their neighboring country.

Two hours later he sat on an overflowing train heading north.

Six hours later he was on a plane to Sokovia.

Ten hours later he was rushing through a hastily set-up heavily improvised hospital to his next patient.

Fourteen hours later a picture was taken of Doctor Bruce Banner, working while extremely focused on picking out glass shards of one of his many patients’ back, while wearing an improvised doctors get-up and peering intensely through his glasses.

Twenty hours later he was unknowingly trending on Twitter, for once for reasons he would enjoy.

````````````````````````````````

It was day five when Tony got a call back from counter terrorism, and he was asked to take the call privately regarding a terrorist he might know the location of.

Wanda Maximoff.

After he’d informed the locals that he in fact had a stinking suspicion of where the witch was, he’d been encouraged to make a notice of it to the police.

“Yes I understand.” Tony nodded, even though counter terrorism agent he was on the phone with could not see him. “I understand that you want to arrest her right now, but we have to think of a way to keep her contained. If she’s arrested now, it will only result in the loss of life and put a lot of people in danger.”

“Then what do you expect us to do? Just let her walk?”

“For now.” Tony answered. Fuck, it was not going to be easy to convince them. “But it won’t be for long. What I’m suggesting is that you give me a day or two to come up with a way to contain her powers. Then you can arrest her.”

“And what if that ends up with a fight?”

“Then I’ll be there. If she’s arrested now it’ll be a bloodbath and she’ll run free. The people of Sokovia deserve the justice of having the witch on trial, of deciding the punishment. They can’t do that if she escapes custody or is killed during the arrest.” Tony looks up at the sky and wishes he was religious so he had a god to ask to work with him on this. Instead he crosses his fingers.

“One day, you say?”

“One day.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

And Tony blows out a breath of relief. “Thank you.”

````````````````````````````````````

On day six Tony works day and night to complete the design. Professor Xavier was kind enough to let him test the collar on him. It takes him several attempts and there is a pressure of time he hasn’t felt in a long time.

On day six Tony finishes the suppression collar with hours to spare and counter terrorism suits up to make their move.

“Thank you, Special agent Gomez.” Tony says as he hands over the finished collar.

The man shakes his head. “No. Thank you, Doctor Stark.”

````````````````````````````````````

On day seven Steve has just returned from his daily morning run when the door is kicked in. He’s immediately ready to fight, but he get’s confused when they yell who they are. It’s during the confusion that he hears Wanda yell.

“Wanda!” Steve yells. It’s then that there is something thrown at him and he’s too late to duck. The projectile unfolds around his neck and all of the sudden he feels weak in a way he hasn’t in many years.

The shock of it makes his vision swim and before he knows it he’s forces face down into the carpet. He tries to struggle free, only to find out he can’t.

That is more than enough to scare him senseless.

When Clint fires an arrow a shot rings out and his friend, whom he’d spent so much time with, whom he’d saved the world with together, drops.

Steve’s stomach turns as he hears the squelch when Clint hits the ground and Steve knows that Clint won’t be getting up ever again.

He’s hauled up and loaded into a van. He can’t be very sure where the others are. His vision was so blurry he could hardly make out the face of the people standing ten feet away from him.

The van’s doors roll shut with a definitive slam and Steve is left to wonder how in seven days everything went wrong.

````````````````````````````````````

On day 9 Clint is buried.

Day 17 rolls around and Tony goes back to the US and leaves Bruce behind in Sokovia to stay longer and act as a doctor. Bruce agrees to keep an emergency comm on him, in case the Hulk is needed more as Bruce Banner is.

Steve is sentenced to four years in prison on day 55, with a possibility of parole in two years. Wanda Maximoff is executed for her crimes against humanity and attempted genocide after 90 days. On day 91 Steve hits another prisoner so hard that the prisoner ends up in the hospital. He ends up in isolation for the rest of his sentence.

On day 105 Tony meets the Defenders and starts recruiting and uniting heroes across the globe.

244 days after the Sokovia incident, the Sokovia accords pass. Tony, along with Hope, the Defenders, Sorcerer Supreme, War machine and many others are gathered in Vienna to sign the accords on live television. Steve shakes his head as he watches Tony ruin everything the Avengers stood for and give that corrupt government free reign over any and all super heroes.

856 days after Sokovia, Thanos comes for earth. Four days later Thanos is defeated and earth becomes known for their heroes.

On day 1460 Steve is released from prison and it’s when there is no one standing outside the gate to wait for him that he realizes that he has no where to go. Sam had gotten out over two years ago, and he’d not visited Steve a single time while in prison. When he called Tony, he didn’t pick up.

Ten days after getting out of prison, Steve’s application to the accord’s board is denied. Five days later he’s arrested for vigilantism, battery, and breaking and entering. He’s back in prison on day 1476.

On day 1476 Tony is having breakfast with Stephen, Danny and Luke in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. When he reads the newspaper, it shows the story of Captain America’s return to jail on the third page.

He puts the paper down, takes a sip of his coffee and returns his attention to Danny, who’s telling the story of how Dare Devil was thrown into a dumpster, only to find out that Danny was already in it and the confusion they both had at that time.

What was it that Peter always says? Big mood? He thinks it applies to that particular story.

Tony smiles as he looks at his friends. He’s got everything he needs.


End file.
